14 DAY TRIAL // Free documentation available from Microsoft is designed to streamline the migration from Live@Edu Hotmail to Outlook Live. IT professionals that need to get users off of Live@Edu Hotmail and onto Outlook Live can now grab a FAQ from the Microsoft Download Center.
Don’t let the official label of the resource fool you; although the documentation indeed includes a list of frequently asked questions as well as answers from Microsoft, fact is that the final part is reserved to the Hotmail to Outlook Live Migration Process walkthrough.
The software giant walks IT pros through each step of the migration operation, providing a visual guide of the various stages of the process.
The Redmond company does advise IT administrators to stick to the Hotmail to Outlook Live migration steps as they are designed to minimize risk as much as possible.
“Migration is divided into steps, so that you don’t move to the next step until you have verified the results of the previous step,” the company said.
“As an administrator, you initiate each step of the process. You evaluate whether all data is fully migrated and email is working as expected before you turn off Hotmail.
“At each step, the migration page of the Service Management Portal provides reports which list all mailboxes in your domain and show whether each mailbox and mailbox content migrated successfully.”
Of course, in the end users will need to weigh in on the success of the migration. This will happen after the migration is wrapped up, with admins being able to leverage a built-in time period enabling account owners to provide feedback on the transition.
It is only after users validate the success of the migration to Outlook Live, that IT professionals can pull the plug on the Hotmail system.
This is the content that will be transitioned from Hotmail to Outlook Live according to Microsoft: “the mailboxes of all users in the domain; all email in all mailbox folders; each user’s Hotmail folder structure is maintained in Outlook Live; [and] all contacts within Hotmail.”
At the same time, there’s also content that will not make it in the migrations, such as: “calendar information (including events); distribution lists; custom user settings such as email signatures and email forwarding; [and] messages that are larger than 25 MB.”